The Govcom.org Foundation, Amsterdam, and
its collaborators
have developed a software tool that locates
and visualizes networks on the Web. The Issue
Crawler, at http://issuecrawler.net,
is used by NGOs and other researchers to answer
questions about specific networks
and effective networking more generally. You
also may do in-depth research with the software.

The following is an overview of the
types of networks commonly sought.
For each network type, methods are
provided. Finally, there are sample
questions, as well as a simple
survey to help get you started.

Common networks sought by NGOs, and the methods
used to find them with the Issue Crawler.

2.1
My Social Network

My Social Network: This
is the organization's overall social network.
Everybody wants to see their Web network.
The network map provides indications about
which organizations are in the network (NGOs,
media, governments, inter-governmental organizations,
donors, corporations, scientific establishments,
individuals, etc.). The map also may provide
indications of the organization’s overall
‘centrality’ in the network, and/or
the ‘cluster’ it finds itself
in.

Method: Does your organization belong to a
caucus, a campaign, an association, a partnership,
etc.? Is it itself a ‘network’?
Does it have project partners, or frequent
associates? Issuecrawler.net will
map the network and provide indications of
your organization’s showing in it.
Use the URLs of all the organizations in a
particular nominal grouping, e.g., the caucus,
campaign, network, association, partnership,
or project. Type or paste the group’s
URLs into the Issue Crawler, and run the harvester.

Note on crawl depth.
If you have ‘links’ pages as URLs
(i.e., pages with links to the organizations
in the group), use one layer deep. If using
homepages, use 2 or 3 layers deep. For best
results, use links pages. Crawls using homepages
consume more crawler energy, and take longer.

Note on crawl name.
Use the group name as your crawl name, e.g.,
Sixteen Days of Activism Against Gender Violence
- Organizers.

2.2
Their Social Network (Any organization's
network profile).

Use the same method as My Social Network,
but from the perspective of another organization.

Issue Network: This is
the network of organizations around a particular
issue, and the original purpose of the software.
Who’s doing ‘conflict
timber’? Who’s doing
‘communication rights’? What’s
the network around an issue at this time?
Besides organizations, the network may have
key documents, events, products, tools, slogans
and more that bind the network, or particular
clusters in the network. You may explore these
commonalities once you have located a network.

Method: Doing a key word search in Google
and using all the top ten or twenty results
is one way to start, but it is not
wholly advisable, for Google’s
returns rely on the ‘entire Web’,
while we are interested in only parts of the
Web – networks. See also pieces that
touch on the Issue
Crawler philosophy.

To begin locating an issue network, use a
short list of URLs which, in your view, provide
a good overview of the issue. To gather such
a list, you could use Google or another search
engine (collecting one or more of the returns),
but you also could ask an ‘expert’,
gather organization names or URLs from one
or more decent newspaper articles, rely on
a particular organization’s link list
related to an issue, scrape URLs from a discussion
list (archive), etc.

Type or paste URLs in the Issue Crawler, and
harvest. The Issue Crawler’s default
settings are for issue network location.

Most issue professionals
understand the current ‘establishment’
in a particular issue or policy area. To find
out what the network location software understands
as the establishment, use the strategy for
selecting starting points from the Issue Network,
and use 3 iterations of method. Be warned,
that three iterations of method gives the
crawler the most amount of work to do, and
the results are slow in coming.

Event Network. This is the favourite
of many event organizers and attendees.
Who is here? Who should be here? The software
locates the extended network of organizations
around the event attendees.

Method: Put up a big sheet of paper near the
registration desk or common area. Have the
attendees write down their URLs on the sheet.
See example
of the 'Who is here?' sheet, and the result.
If it is an event with many participants,
take care in using URLs that are links pages.

Network
Evolution. Many NGOs and others are interested
in how a particular network evolves
over time. Which groups are becoming
more central, which less so and why? Is the
network shifting geographically? Has it shifted
its focus? Once you have located a network,
use the Scheduler to re-locate
the network at regular intervals.

The Scheduler has two settings.
Schedule network location according to your
original starting points, or according to
the last available network. The former is
advised, for evolution is more likely to be
gradual, but the latter may be more intriguing.
(The govcom.org researchers have not explored
the latter as of yet.)

Scheduler settings:
every month
original starting points

3. General insider
tips
These tips are written from the perspective
of someone who has used the Issue Crawler
for some years now.

1) Avoid using big media sites,
big portals, search engines and similar as
starting points for the crawler. All these
types of sites link all over the place, and
do not produce ‘networks’.

2) Blogs. It's best to crawl
the 'permalinks' as opposed to the blog homepages.
Permalinks are particular postings, dedicated
web pages.

3) Quantities of starting points. Less
is more.

4) Find the right links pages,
and use them as starting points. A links page
is one or more pages on a site that contains
hyperlinks to other sites. On a site like
Greenpeace.org, there are many links pages.
Use the one that pertains specifically
to the issue or phenomenon under
question. If the links are spread out through
the site, or are in a database, try to get
a grasp of the site structure. Use the page
as a starting point that you believe will
lead you to the right links.

5) Stripping URLs from sites. If you cannot
see the URLs on the page, view source
in your browser, and copy and paste
the portion of the html code with links to
other sites into the Harvester. The
Harvester will strip out the code, leaving
only URLs.
6) Review your starting points before launching
a crawl. Have a look at your starting points.
Delete duplicates, as well
as URLs that are not likely to lead the crawler
to links.

7) Exclusion list. Make your own stop
list. The stop list is a list of
sites or pages the Issue Crawler neither will
crawl, nor return in a network. If you are
searching for networks in Russia, there are
site stat counters, big portals, software
download pages, and other sites particular
to the Russian Web and where it leads. Use
a stop list for that area. You simply may
add your stop list to the default stop list,
or paste over the default. Take note of the
format of the stop list, and replicate it.

8) Keep a log. If you are undertaking a (fairly)
serious piece of work, write down your thought
process as well as your preliminary discoveries
as you go along. These notes will
come in handy when you are explaining your
results and your interpretation of
the network.

9) Retrieving your starting
points if you did not save them. The
starting points are at the bottom of the xml
file that contains your crawl results.
The xml file is located on the network details
page, which is reached through the Network
Manager or the Archive. Copy and paste the
starting points at the bottom of the xml file
into the harvester. Add or delete URLs, and
press harvest.

4. Doing a Project with the Issue Crawler

The Issue Crawler is suitable for the study
of networks. Whilst it may be used
to get a quick picture, it is not a piece
of software like Google, with instant results.
Rather, the Crawler takes its time. Leave
yourself a few days to a week to find a decent
network. The absence of a network is also
a ‘finding’.

1) Networking effects. Has
there been a network effect? A network effect
may be defined as the uptake of an organizational
campaign by an existing network, or the growth
of a network around a particular campaign
or issue. Examples include the rapid growth
of the international campaign to ban landmines,
as well as the worldwide protests against
the War in Iraq. Examples of intense networking
that have yet to yield major social change
include the Burma campaigns. Read
more.

2) Regional networks. Is
there a regional network around an issue?
Does ‘global civil society’ fragment
regional civil society? A regional network
comprises organizations from a particular
region, such as the Caucuses, Central Asia,
South Central Europe, or Scandanavia. Whilst
the U.S. has its own networks, it has proven
difficult to find regional networks without
U.S. reliance.

3) Donor effects. Which networks
of organizations around issues hold together
if donors and/or intergovernmental organizations
are removed? Certain actors may understand
a donor-free network, or cluster, as more
‘authentic’. View
case study maps.

4) No Internet. Mapping issues
in regions with low connectivity, low Internet
penetration. Which issues in countries or
regions with low connectivity resonate the
most on the Internet? Are these the most relevant
issues on the ground? What is the network’s
understanding of the issues in, say, the Fergana
Valley? View case study maps 12.

5) Network Evolution. HIV-AIDS
in Russia. Which organizations have risen
(and which fallen) in significance over the
past two years, within the HIV-AIDs networks
in Russia and Ukraine? What conclusions may
be drawn about the type of information on
offer from these network dynamics? We found
that despite international funding of sex-related
HIV-AIDs information agencies, the intravenous-drug-use
information providers, in Russia, are still
the most significant in the networks. View
case study map (pdf).

6) A virtual society? Interpenetration
of the online and the offline. Does the information
available online overlap significantly with
the offline? For example, are newspaper accounts
of what’s going on similar to the network’s
accounts? Read
more.

7) Doing without news? Has
my initiative (which received press attention)
resonated as well in the broader issue network?
We may have a press strategy. Do we need a
network strategy? Read
more.

8) Do networks have preferred formats?
Which formats circulate best in networks?
What does a network do with a press release?
What does it do with a tool or a prize? Read
more (pdf).

5. Issue Mapping Process with Survey and Methods

The Issue Mapping process could begin
with a survey. The purpose of the survey is
to compile specific collections of URLs for
inputting into the software, and locating
a network. Additionally, the survey aids with
particular kinds of analyses, explained in
the methods sections below.

5.1 Survey

1) Name your issue area.

2) Name the most significant organizations
in your issue area, with URLs.

5) List the most important conferences in
your issue area, for the past year, the current
year and next year, with URLs.

6) List the organizations in your issue area
that you have had email contact with in the
past 6-12 months, with URLs.

5.2 Survey results and methods

The survey results provide:

1) An issue (question 1),
and the starting points for a crawl
to locate an issue network (question 2).

2) The substance that may hold together a
network (question 3). Each of these terms
either alone or in some combination may determine
the 'life' of the network - the blood
that circulates around the network, keeping
it alive. Once a network is located,
peruse it. Note whether the organizations
in the network use the same language, refer
to the same slogans, etc. One may color code
or otherwise annotate the map showing which
organizations are engaged in which sub-issues.
Such an information overlay enriches the interpretative
power of the map.

3) Key documents that introduce you to an
issue area (question 4). These documents may
organize a network, or a cluster. You could
read them. You also may find out who links
to these documents, providing further indication
of key, knowledgeable actors.
To find out who links to a page or site on
the Web, use the advanced search option of
a search engine. For more exhaustive research,
use more than one search engine.

4) Events that may bring together significant
actors (question 5), with URLs that may provide
participant lists. The results pave the way
for locating an event network. The map also
may help you to organize a future
event.

5) Email networks. Having
a list of organizations (with URLs) opens
the door for comparative analysis between
the issue network and someone’s social
network. Note that, in advance of analysis,
an individual often will equate his/her email
network with the Issue Network. Findings often
show a divergence between the key
players and whom one knows.

6. A Few Key Terms

Crawl depth:
Here is a strict definition of how depth is
calculated:
The pages fetched from the starting point
URLs are considered to be
depth 0. The pages fetched from URL links
from those pages are considered to be depth
1. In general, the pages found from URL links
on a page of depth N are considered to be
depth N+1. If you set a depth of 2, then no
pages of depth 2 will be fetched. Only pages
of depth 0 and 1 will be fetched (ie. two
levels of depth). {Text by David Heath at
Oneworld.}